Sharpening is one of those terms that often makes photography purists shiver. After all, if a camera and the lens are doing their job properly, the picture should naturally be sharp and require no further processing, right?

Well, yes and no. Ideally this would always be the case. In a perfect digital world, the picture would be perfectly sharp, perfectly exposed, and the color levels would all be perfectly recorded by your camera.

Sadly, the world of the digital photographer is often times less than perfect.

The sceince of photography is pretty fluid and the tools are not always calibrated exactly to our liking. Sharpening is almost always applied in-camera. A certain amount is dialed in by the manufacturer in-camera and is performed by the filter overtop of the image sensor. However, camera makers need to find a balance. Too much sharpening can cause moiré with certain subject matter. Too little sharpening will cause customers to complain about soft images.

That’s why most digital cameras have a sharpening control, to allow you to manipulate the amount of sharpening that is applied to the image. Usually the amounts that can be applied are harmless levels of sharpening, and won’t do any damage to the image. Still, the process of software sharpening In-Camera does alter the image in a way that cannot be repaired or altered unless you shoot RAW.

Going beyond that is sharpening done in post-processing. Technically this is the same process, but it’s performed a step later, with the difference being that it gives you a little more control over how the image will end up looking.

So should you use sharpening? Yes. The in-camera sharpening is likely set to a level that won’t harm your picture even if you crank it up and max it out. The post-processing sharpening in most software needs to be used with a bit more care, since too much sharpening can drop vital information and render a picture useless, but it’s also a handy tool when used conservatively.

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I’ve been really occupied lately with other things that have kept me away from the site, and I apologize for not having any posts in the last month or so. This happens, and there’s little we can do about it – but I appreciate all the emails inquiring about me and the status of Fotohacker. I’m fine, we’re fine… just busy. But the photo world has been busy too, over the last few weeks, so let’s check out some cool stuff.

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Beta 2 is out now, and I’ve had a chance to play with it. It’s got some really nice new features and a few interface changes. You can download the Lightroom 2 Beta yourself, if you want.
• Do you like quick access to your camera? Do you like westerns? If so, you may like the camera holster. If you own a Canon Rebel XTi or a Nikon D40, D40x, D60, D200, or D300 – you’re in luck! Grab your leather camera holster today!
• If you’re still on the fence about whether to keep your photos in their native RAW form or to convert them to DNG files, you may want to inspect this article.
• If you haven’t heard already, Flickr now does video.
• Depth of Field… if you’re like me, you love being able to achieve a narrow depth of field, but it can be tricky with slower lenses, which is why a handy DOF calculator is required. Here’s a good online DOF calc.
• There are 16 days left to contribute to issue 17 of JPG Magazine.

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Geocoding or Geotagging has become increasingly popular in the last couple of years. That’s likely because the number of cameras that can accomodate GPS integration has risen and their cost has dropped, not to mention the growing list of photo sharing websites that use that kind of GPS data for extended features like mapping. So, it seems like GPS and Photography are now intrinsically linked.

With many higher end cameras, you can now connect a GPS directly to the camera if you have the right equipment. With Nikon cameras like the D200, D300, or D2X, or D3 – a 10-pin port allows you to connect a GPS directly to the unit (provided you have the right cables). The problem is that this can be unwieldy, and it typically requires a high end SLR that not all of us have.

There are two slightly better solutions around this, which we’ll discuss.

Though extra gear is not always the answer, sometimes I like new gadgets. This one was recommended to me by a wildlife photographer I talked to a few weeks ago. It’s a wireless adapter from Red Hen Systems called the BLUE2CAN device, which plugs into most high end Nikon cameras and will pull the GPS data via Bluetooth. I’m not sure if something like this exists for other camera manufacturers, but if it does, let me know in the comments.

The second method, which I like, is through the use of software. It requires no extra gear, because it means only having to record waypoint at a regular interval on your GPS while you take pictures normally. All the legwork of matching those waypoints to your images is done after the fact, by a program.

Mac:

Although Mac users won’t have as many options as PC users for geocoding software, they ultimately have the single best choice with GPSPhotoLinker, which is simple to use, supports most RAW formats, can batch photos easily, and gives you a nice view of the best matching track point as well as the one preceding and following that point.

Windows:

For those who use Windows, the choices are more abundant than for Mac, but they are all slightly less stellar. The best, free solution that I’ve found so far is GPicSync, which is fairly easy to use and will insert all your geocode information into your pictures EXIF header by matching the tracklog date and time with the picture date and time. GPicSync will also support elevation and will create a KML file for Google Earth. It also supports popular RAW files like those from Nikon, Canon, Olympus, and Pentax.

Now, get lost…

Just remember to take lots of pictures.

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